The Arab League is meeting in Baghdad for the first time in 22 years,
in the absence of long-time fixtures such as Zein El Abidin Ben Ali of
Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, and Ali
Abdullah Saleh of Yemen– all overthrown by the popular uprisings of
2011-12. Of the remaining two countries where there has been a
substantial revolutionary movement, Syria has been suspended from Arab
League membership, so that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad will be
discussed only in his absence. But Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy has
succeeded in remaining diplomatically viable despite its crackdown on
its own protesting crowds. In part, Bahrain is being treated
differently because many Arab leaders code the Shiite protesters there
as an Iranian fifth column.

Syria is among the most pressing items on the docket, and is an issue
that has already divided and in some ways defeated the meeting. Saudi Arabia and Qatar wanted a resolution calling for al-Assad to step down in Syria and for arming the Syrian
revolutionaries. Failing that, they wanted to invite members of the
rebel parties to attend in Baghdad. Iraq rejected all these proposals.
As a result, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, along with about half of the attending countries, are only sending ambassadors, not foreign
ministers– a snub at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The Arabic press is reporting leaks that the League will reject foreign military intervention in Syria, but will back Kofi
Annan’s UN plan. It is also being rumored that the al-Maliki government
is attempting to deflect a harder line on Syria by threatening to bring
up as an agenda item the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities
in the Arab world. (For North Africa the discussion would concern
Berbers, for Egypt Coptic Christians, for Saudi Arabia Shiite Muslims,
etc.). Iraq is among the more multi-cultural of the Arabic-speaking
states, with its Shiite majority and its large Kurdish minority, and so
is in a position to lead a charge on the issue of minorities, one that
would be extremely unwelcome to Sunni Arab-majority states. The problems
of minorities are not irrelevant to the Syria crisis, since the
religious minorities there are fearful of the secular Baath government
being overturned by one dominated by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists.
These fears are shared by al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in
Iraq.

Euronews has a video report on the Arab League’s support for the United Nations plan for Syria, involving a call for a ceasefire and negotiations.